Quote: “In the [collective], the participants all stand on equal ground - no one is assigned to the traditional role of teacher or student. Instead, anyone who has particular knowledge of, or experience with, a given subject may take on the role of mentor at any time.” (pg. 51)
Explanation: I liked this quote because it is apparent that teachers no longer have all the answers in the classroom. Students are constantly using their phone to google answers and teach themselves things in a very informal way. The traditional teacher-student roles are changing. Now we are facilitators, helping kids learn on their own and contribute to a global community.
Question: How do we take what kids like to do with their phones outside of class, like hangout on social media, and bring it into the classroom to aid learning?
Connection: This idea of learning in the collective can be tied to facebook, for me, and other social media sites. Personally, I learn a lot by perusing my feed and clicking on articles my friends post. This is an example of learning in the collective. Why can’t we create a collective that students can learn from in our subject matter?
Aha: Students learning through a collective learning community created in my class, and connecting to other classes across the nation...and even world!
Chapter 5 - The Personal with the Collective
Quote: “We don’t mean to suggest that every interaction with the new media creates a learning environment. Rather, we suggest that each collective has the potential to make learning fun and easy and to allow people to follow their desires and passions in productive and fruitful ways.” (pg. 72)
Explanation: Setting up some kind of learning collective for your class to be active participants of, no doubt, has a lot of benefits. Ideally, my future class will have an interactive space to learn about math that would make learning fun.
Question: How do we create a collective in our subject matter, math, that makes learning fun and easy and creates desire in kids that “hate math”?
Connection: Guru looks like a great tool for students and teachers to create an interactive online community. I can’t wait to play around with it more and possibly use it in my future class.
Aha: The good news is that apps and tools that help create an educational online collective are being created and marketed left and right. It is finding the right tool for your teaching style and your students that might pose some difficulty.
Chapter 6 - We Know More Than We Can Say
Quote: “The new culture of learning nurtures collective indwelling. With access to the nearly endless supply of collectives today, learning that is driven by passion and play is poised to significantly alter and extend our ability to think, innovate, and discover in ways that have not previously been possible. Most of all, it may allow us to ask questions that have never before been imaginable.” (pg. 89)
Explanation: This quote is important because it reiterates the importance of creating learning communities around passions because that is what will nurture innovation with future generations.
Question: Is every student going to find they fit into a collective? What about the students that don’t like learning through online games and communities?
Connection: Learning in a collective is successful because it is tacit learning. It's learning by doing. If students can get in there and get their hands dirty in a collective, then deeper connections are made.
Aha: Give students choice in assignments and you may be surprised on what they produce!